In Warsaw Poem by Czeslaw Milosz

What are you doing here, poet, on the ruinsOf St. John's Cathedral this sunnyDay in spring?

What are you thinking here, where the windBlowing from the Vistula scattersThe red dust of the rubble?

You swore never to beA ritual mourner.You swore never to touchThe deep wounds of your nationSo you would not make them holyWith the accursed holiness that pursuesDescendants for many centuries.

But the lament of AntigoneSearching for her brotherIs indeed beyond the powerOf endurance. And the heartIs a stone in which is enclosed,Like an insect, the dark loveOf a most unhappy land.I did not want to love so.That was not my design.I did not want to pity so.That was not my design.My pen is lighterThan a hummingbird's feather. This burdenIs too much for it to bear.How can I live in this countryWhere the foot knocks againstThe unburied bones of kin?

I hear voices, see smiles. I cannotWrite anything; five handsSeize my pen and order me to writeThe story of their lives and deaths.Was I born to becomea ritual mourner?I want to sing of festivities,The greenwood into which ShakespeareOften took me. LeaveTo poets a moment of happiness,Otherwise your world will perish.

It's madness to live without joyAnd to repeat to the deadWhose part was to be gladnessOf action in thought and in the flesh, singing, feastsOnly the two salvaged words:Truth and justice.